William Russell (1735 â January 14, 1793) was an American militia officer, planter and politician who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly and for whom several sites are named in Virginia, although he is often confused with his son, William Russell III) who had a similar career in Virginia and Kentucky. Renowned in his day as an Indian fighter, this William Russell participated in military campaigns against the Shaawanwaki (Shawnee), Lenape (Delaware), Mingo, and Aniyvwiya (Cherokee) peoples in the Ohio Valley and Appalachian frontier, as well as operated commercial enterprises in southwestern Virginia that relied on enslaved labor. Russell County and Russellville, Kentucky are named in his honor.
Russell, named after his father, was born in 1735 in Culpeper County in the Virginia Colony and educated at the College of William & Mary.
His first wife, the former Tabitha Adams, died in 1776, leaving him with nine children. His second wife, Elizabeth Henry â a sister of Patrick Henry â survived him by more than thirty years and was influential in the early history of the Methodist Church in America. His son, William Russell III), joined his father and Daniel BoponeMany of Russell's descendants settled in what became Russell and Scott Counties in Virginia. However, his namesake son,
In September 1773, Russell joined an expedition led by Daniel Boone into Kain-tuck-ee â unceded hunting grounds of the Shaawanwaki (Shawnee), Lenape (Delaware), Mingo, and Aniyvwiya (Cherokee). The expedition was part of a pattern of settler encroachment that violated the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which had explicitly forbidden colonial settlement west of the Appalachians. Indigenous nations had been defending this territory against such incursions for years.
On October 9, 1773, near the Cumberland Gap, Shaawanwaki, Lenape, and Mingo warriors attacked a scouting party to repel the invasion. Russell's teenage son Henry, and James Boone, son of Daniel Boone, were killed. The surviving settlers withdrew. While colonial accounts framed the attack as an unprovoked ambush; the warriors were defending territory that was legally and historically theirs.
The deaths were used to justify Lord Dunmore's War (1774), in which Russell participated at the Battle of Point Pleasant. The war ended with the Treaty of Camp Charlotte, under which the Shaawanwaki were coerced into surrendering their hunting rights south of the Ohio River â a major dispossession that opened the region to accelerated settler colonization. Historians including Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz have identified Lord Dunmore's War as a deliberate precursor to the systematic forced removal of Native nations from the Ohio Valley.
During the American Revolutionary War, Russell was promoted to colonel in 1776. He commanded the 13th Virginia Regiment before transferring to the 5th Virginia Regiment in 1778. He corresponded directly with George Washington regarding the deployment of his troops. After the fall of Charleston in 1780, Russell was captured by the British and held prisoner for six months before being exchanged. He rejoined the Continental Line and was present at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. On November 15, 1783, he was brevetted to the rank of Brigadier General upon the disbanding of the 5th Virginia Regiment.
Russell was elected a justice of the peace for once-vast Fincastle County, Virginia, the justices in that era jointly also administering the county. In 1776, Fincastle County voters elected Russell and Arthur Campbell as their representatives to the Fifth (and final) Virginia Convention, which ultimately accepted the Declaration of Independence. They succeeded William Christian and Stephen Trigg, who represented the county at the previous Revolutionary Conventions (with Robert Doak who had been one of the new county's first representatives to the House of Burgesses alongside William Christian in 1773 also participating on this county's behalf in the First Revolutionary Convention). Russell and Campbell then became Fincastle County's first representatives in the new Virginia House of Delegates in 1776. Several years after the creation of Washington County from part of Fincastle County, Russell won election and re-election to the Virginia House of Delegates from that county. He won election to the Virginia Senate in 1788, and served until 1792, when replaced by John Preston.
At the conclusion of the war, Russell became an original member of the Society of the Cincinnati, an hereditary organization of Revolutionary War officers who had received substantial land grants as compensation for military service.
After the war, Russell operated salt works at Saltville, Virginia. Salt production in western Virginia during this period relied extensively on enslaved labor, with people hired out from eastern Virginia plantations to perform dangerous work under life-threatening conditions. The names of the people Russell enslaved have not been formally documented in published histories, though records may exist in Library of Virginia collections and the Virginia Untold project.
Russell held 20,000 acres of land in and around the Shenandoah Valley, wealth accumulated through military land grants that displaced Indigenous peoples who had inhabited and stewarded the region for generations.
Russell was serving in the Virginia House of Delegates at the time of his death on January 14, 1793, near Front Royal, Virginia. He was originally buried on his family estate and reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery on July 7, 1943.
The following place names honor Russell, reflecting his celebrated status among white settler contemporaries: